One word? When seven would do…

Today was Pulborough Brooks day but taking inspiration from Jan who was not going to be standing around in the rain today I’d looked at the weather forecast and didn’t plan to be walking around in rain today. As it turned out the weather forecast was wrong and we’ve had another day of glorious sunshine here but having got everyone breakfasted and dressed there was actually very little enthusiasm for PB today and when we checked facebook to see noone but us had confirmed as attending it seemed not really worth the drive over on the offchance.

I wanted to go into town to look at winemaking supplies and having had several goes, including one rather brutal attempt by Scarlett to force an earring through an old pierced hole on one my ears and failed as it has closed up I’ve been hankering after getting it re-pierced. I can’t really explain why, it is shallow and vain and I’m far too old to be up to such tricks but I wanted to do it anyway. And Davies and Scarlett knowing the history of all my ear piercings (and indeed being responsible for one each) were quite curious about the whole process so I claim Education as a motivating factor ;). We also needed to get a birthday present for Lorna and Davies who appears to have finally grown, or indeed been in his trousers so long they have shrunk in the wash before he has grown out of them needed some bottom half clothes.

Before we left I made some phonecalls and online purchases meaning we were far too quickly over £300 worse off – I taxed my car online and bought the tickets for FOH then made a phonecall to book some October half term workshops for Davies and Scarlett at Making Space. I am being very proactive for Davies just now as a result of chats we have had about things he wants to do. I suspect he will turn 10 in September and either flourish with loads of new ideas and things he wants to do and learn about or slump so I’m keen to pre-empt that with lots lined up following his passions and interests which primarily are bushcraft and animation. So he has one full-on, outside, professional input on both experience lined up for the autumn which will hopefully help deal with that birthday phenomena where they all do this big changing leap thing as soon as they go up a year (or is that just my two?).

Then into town. We parked for two hours and spent it very productively looking at winemaking stuff and pricing it up but sensibly (for me) not buying anything and coming away to do more research first. We perused charity shops and I was the one who did best really coming away with four new tops, we got Davies 2 pairs of trousers and a pair of shorts, chose a book and hand puppet for Lorna and found only Claire’s Accessories to be offering ear piercing at the astonishing price of £21.95 so my ears remained with the same number of holes in as before. We nipped to the theatre to get tickets for a Shrek gala event like the Alice one we went to which means we need to think about fancy dress (for all four of us apparentely, D&S are insisting we participate – your favourite fairy tale or Shrek character, all suggestions welcome).

We dashed back to the car as we were out of time on the parking and came home via Sainsburys for various food supplies. We had lunch and then back into Lancing to the library. First though we nipped to the little local hairdresser who do ear piercing for the price of the studs and happily made a new hole in my ear and supplied me with a pair of 9ct gold earrings for well under a tenner and explained the whole piercing gun procedure to the children too :). See, educational ;).

Chatterbooks went well. We missed two children from last week but gained one (friend who’d been invited for tea of one of the attendees forgetting they were at Chatterbooks) so had 10. We did Poetry and started off chatting about what we’re reading at the moment before moving on to talk about stories in rhyme. I read Wild About Books and some Edward Lear Nonsense and then we tried to write a poem about the group. We got some good rhymes for the children’s names, ages, gender, location and interests but some were still struggling so I read On Beyond Zebra about made up letters and meanings and I said it was fine to make up a word too aslong as you made up a meaning for it. This worked rather better and I got all the children to made up a word rhyming with their name and a meaning for it. I kicked off with a Glick – a beautiful flower that smelt horrid. We had all sorts of things then – a Zeve (rhymes with Eve) which is a giant rat as big as the Eiffel tower, bright green and smelling of cheese. A Grethan (rhymes with Ethan) which is a green banana that sometimes tastes of apple pie and sometimes pizza, A Marlett (rhymes with Scarlett) that looks like a chicken, makes the sound of a horse and eats sharks, a Borren (rhymes with Lauren) which is a hut where there is peace and quiet, a Dyan (rhymes with Rhyan) which is a dinosaur as big as the universe that has big claws and could pick up everything in it’s hand but is friendly as long as you feed it chips. This exercise worked really well and we had loads of imaginative ideas and creative thought with plenty of enthusisasm when directed the right way with the right suggestions. We had ten minutes left so I handed out paper and pens and read them out what they’d described and got them all to draw their creations.

One of the children has ADHD and last week was no trouble at all but this week was quite a challenge. Russell spent lots of time with him and had a brief chat to his mum at the end. I suspect he does get lots from the sessions but it is not really fair for her to go off and leave him unsupported as it takes the whole attention of one of us away from the rest of the group. Next week is storytelling which should be fine but he might struggle in the final week of book and film reviews so I need to factor in him and his needs in planning the session.

We collected the many, many books we had waiting for us (we’re back to about 80 items on loan between us again :rolls:) and nipped home to collect various plants before going to the allotment. Having done loads of growing from seed this year we had a few gaps on the plot so Ady begged some plugs plants from work and we had some sweetcorn, peas, beans, strawberries and cabbage ready to put in. Davies and Scarlett did some wildlife spotting and pond exploration while I did some weeding and planting. The kids were delighted to see the first crops of peas and set about eating them all :). Ady arrived and he came in while the kids went out for an hours ‘adventuring’ in the woods. Ady was in work clothes and shoes so not keen to get muddy he watered the plot while I finished putting plants in. There is more weeding and cutting back to do and we have about 1/5 of the plot empty but we plotted and planned and will hopefully have that in use soon.

We rang the kids to come back and headed for home. I made the kids tea, sorted out washing and then read several more chapters of Alone on a wide wide sea. Ady watered the crops in the garden and tidied up the playroom. I cooked dinner and we watched some Hugh and chatted about smallholdings.